Every business owner knows that it’s essential to protect all of their assets. This includes protecting their employees and the business itself. Protecting your company and employees can be difficult to do if you’re relying on manually tracking your employees, their hours, and their productivity.
Part of protecting your employees and your business is making sure that everyone is labor law compliant. Without the proper tools, maintaining labor law compliance is very difficult, and you may find that you have broken compliance a few times completely by accident.
A clock in and out app has all the answers you need to maintain company compliance if you know how to use it properly. The functions and features of the clock in and out app can combat some of the employee and business-related issues that lead to non-compliance.
Avoid Time Theft and Bad Timekeeping
One of the biggest problems with compliance is ensuring that timekeeping records are accurate if there is ever a problem with employee pay or if you get audited by the Department of Labor (DOL). When manually team time tracking, employees can easily make mistakes on their timesheets that can cause compliance issues simply because manual entries can lead to inaccurate records.
The second issue that goes along with that is that time theft can also affect job clock records. It shows hours that employees didn’t work, which can make payment records incorrect. This is a problem that can inflate labor costs, and it is nearly impossible to correct.
A time and attendance app prevents time theft by making each employee clock in is unique, so there’s no possibility for buddy punching that would make for fraudulent time cards and inaccurate time records. The hourly employee time tracking process is automated so that there are far fewer mistakes, so you no longer have to worry about payments being incorrect and running into issues with compliance.
Keep Records Over the Long Term
Another problem that can result in non-compliance is when businesses fail to keep their records. In the case of an audit, companies should have 3-5 years’ worth of records. This can be difficult to do if you keep records manually because that requires a lot of paperwork to be properly stored and accounted for if needed.
Not to mention the fact that the records have to be accurate and manual records are prone to have errors. If the records haven’t been corrected, this can lead to significant labor law violations in the event of an audit.
Luckily, a clock in and out app stores employee records automatically, and with the right integrations, those records can be saved to the cloud or downloaded to company servers for use whenever needed. Reports are exceptionally easy to create, meaning that businesses can have the data they need on hand at any time, and it is sure to be correct.
Ensure Time Off Compliance
Making sure employees do what they are supposed to is one of the main ways businesses can minimize the risk of noncompliance. The trouble is that without a modern timesheet management app, it is difficult to track whether employees are taking their breaks and getting the scheduled amount of time off that is mandated by the department of labor. Manual oversight is nearly impossible, and even then, full compliance is unlikely and hard to enforce.
A clock in and out app can track employees and show whether or not they took their breaks. Alerts can be sent to management, who can then address the issue, and reminders can be set so that employees know they need to take their breaks or face potential punishments. This way, the business can address a potential compliance issue before it becomes a real problem for the company.